the Man who Watched the Sea

I knew the man. He lived to watch the sea.

He never left his room. His town was too bleak and out of shore. It would get hours to reach the port city by foot. He couldn’t go there by transport, publics were too tight. But he lived to watch the sea. So, he managed to get a broadcasting of the shore right to his screen. And there he sat, years by, as on some whale-hunt, in his rocking chair, watching. The sea.

The man was never old nor young. He belonged to those, who mature fast with tiredness of world, still immature as a playful child. He remembered the sea, once or thrice: some childhood, some rush teenage experience, something else (which the man used to think of as a voyage spiritual). Time by, the mundane broke his shoulder-will. The man had tried to reach the sea, but any time he tried, an hour by (half an hour, even), he’d lost the intimacy. And that intimacy between the man and the sea was the only thing, holding him from cancelling his living.

The man had wits, so clearly he’d realized, that intimacy must be struggled for. But then, even if reached, he couldn’t stay there forever. That would be just some sea, not the sea, he wanted. The sea, which’s always by his side.
With those thoughts, he redesigned his room, transformed in a kind of open theater, with panoramic screen in front, and glassy ceiling, so that sky’d be near. Since then, in dimness of the room, he now called ‘the shore of goals’, the man rocked in his chair, ‘neath the suns and thunders, watching. The intimate sea.

Once a day only he’d turn back from the screen and have a light meal. He never ate anything, watching the sea. That ruined their intimacy. But the man smoked pipes, and sipped the amber liquors. He told his sea, that pipes produce the clouds, and the liquid ambers – are the lost treasures of her deeps: the pirate gold, or even those from the Atlantis. Occasionally, the man drank a beer or thrice. He told his sea, those were the wavely foams.

The sea on the screen never was the same for the man, who watched her. Even the slightest change of wind, the grow of tides, the winks of weather, the shadows or the lights – he saw them all, he knew what she was thinking, how she was feeling, what she was dreaming about.

He named her seagulls by the names of his favourite authors (back from days before he’d leave the reading). Machen was keen on finding shiny pebbles, Hesse strayed until the farthest wave and dipped there for shark teasing, Bronte squeaked a ‘greensleeves’ tune the closest to the sun she could get. Time by, the man watched not just the sea, but the many details, through which he loved her more, although his happiness became to fade, the more he loved her.

It was a year or thrice, when the man stopped rocking in his chair pleasingly. Sat still, grabbing hard the chair-arms, intensely gazing, as if drilling through the screen. The slightest changes in the way of sea, the habits of the gulls of literature, the distant ship, the man imagined being himself – were gone. In lieu of the sea, as intimate as could be, the man watched the maiden, one alike the sea. The winds and waves became her sound. But the man was too afraid to talk to her. He never wished his sea to be a… being. Did he?

The man turned off the screen. Turned back from the screen. Watched the wall for a month or thrice, or longer. Mute, and senseless. Then, one sudden day, he rose and left the room. Never came back.

Months later, when realized, he’s gone, the room was placed for a rent. The new owner checked in, fancied a chair, turned on the screen. There, nothing but the writing on the sand: “The Sea was here”. And the sign, “the Man”.

_________
He set sails himself through her screen.
On the 29th day of the moon...